October grief, just like every year

October.

It’s October again. The grief has been creeping up on me for a few days, but I was busy and distracted and only noted a feeling of unease at the back of my mind without connecting it to October. I wondered vaguely what was wrong but was too busy and distracted until today to sit with it and identify the feeling.

The distractions are gone and the grief has come roaring up, no longer creeping quietly, almost unnoticed.

I lie on my bed and sob, wail, a mess of tears and snot and grief. It is not an easy thing, surrendering to this pain.

The weight of grief is back, pressing on my chest, constricting my breathing. My throat is tight, my eyes wet. My hands shake as I try to type this and my body is racked with sobs. My heart is breaking all over again. Oh, October. I thought this year might be easier, lighter. It’s been six years. But the pain is crushing me, ripping through me, tearing me open, again, like always.

This year another name has been added to the list of those I grieve. Another person gone, gone forever. This, this is the time of year I feel all those losses, stacked up like stones, pressing down on my chest. I feel like I’m being crushed by their weight. Another friend who was once my best friend has died. He is the fourth person who was once my best friend who has died. The third to die young. Unlike the others, he chose the hour and the means of his own death.

I feel weighted down, exhausted; my body is leaden. Every time I stop moving the grief wells up inside me again, stealing my breath.

I think about the way my Gramma died, surrounded by the women who loved her, her last breath leaving her body as I wrapped my arms around her, pouring all my love into her in that hospital room. I think about how my husband died alone, how suddenly his breathing stopped, his spinal cord crushed and severed. I think about how SH died, choked to death by her rapist in her own living room. I think about how SM died in despair, hanging from a noose of his own making in that green forest, next to Atascadero Creek.

Life is fleeting and fragile and painful and sometimes brutal.

2015-10-15 

at my husband's memorial, 2009